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[Guillaume]

The dude (here he is on Twitter, and here on TIGSource) raised 50k on Kickstarter.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1338986832/sealark-an-oceanic-adventure-game?ref=live

The pixel art looks really slick, and I love the music. The concept+game world+promised gameplay is also quite cool.

I'm a bit worried though— he says he's going to deliver in 8 months with himself as the only full time programmer+spriter.
I don't doubt him as an artist, but as a game dev... he has no track record of previous games, and the only code related thing of his I can find is his SE profile (StackOverflow and GameDev)

I feel like at best this could be a Fez, and at worst it's just going to sink into the depths of dead projects... anyone else have an additional perspective? I'm quite on the fence about retracting my pledge.

[Clairvoire]

Oh good lord you found my stackoverflow.  That's embarrassing, aha!

But thanks for the compliments!  I suppose there's no two ways about it, 8 months is a /criminally/ short span of time for a project like this.  When I set the KS goal of 5k, I was expecting to do the game while holding a fulltime job, and that the game would have a relatively small scope.  As more and more funds started coming in however, it went from needing a fulltime job, to a part time, to needing none at all, to actually being able to have an assistant.  Which is great!

You've probably seen my work schedule on twitter already, aha.  Even if it were a sane 40 hours a week though, I'd have about 1300 labour hours to sink in.  I've never started a project of this size before, because work has always gotten in the way, but I feel given that time, I should be able to finish.  Coming from me, that mustn't mean much, but hopefully I'll start proving it soon!

[Guillaume]

Thanks for taking the time to reply

I've never completed a game the size of what Sealark intends to be, but if I have but one piece of advice to give you: get feedback early and often. You probably want to get a group of alpha testers, and ship them builds every week. Additionally, you want to post screenshots and videos very regularly on social media. Having this kind of feedback loop with the community will help you not lag too far behind.

Looking forward to the next 9 months!

[alastair]

Looks a bit like Treasure Adventure Game.

[louisdeb]

As soon as I saw the soundtrack was by flashygoodness he had my $15

[ANtY]

You've probably seen my work schedule on twitter already, aha.  

This is crazy, you want to work for 8 months having only 3 hours of free time per week!!??? 

I'd advice to change it to 8 hours a day and 6 days per week at most, be realistic, no one is a robot. Also no one would like you to have a bad time developing the game, right? It's for the best.

[louisdeb]

agreed

[Manuel Magalhães]

This game looks lovely!

[TeeGee]

You've probably seen my work schedule on twitter already, aha.  

This is crazy, you want to work for 8 months having only 3 hours of free time per week!!??? 

I'd advice to change it to 8 hours a day and 6 days per week at most, be realistic, no one is a robot. Also no one would like you to have a bad time developing the game, right? It's for the best.

Yes, this. Setting completely unrealistic goals for yourself is the first step towards failure. If it seems that you won't be able to finish the game in 8 months, just move the deadline. It's better to delay the game than to kill yourself trying to fit into some crazy arbitrary timeframe.

The art looks fantastic, by the way .

[nekokoneko]

Looks fucking cool!

Have you watched; http://anidb.net/perl-bin/animedb.pl?show=anime&aid=8916

[TertiumQuid]

Serious Ponyo vibe! 

And your schedule is awesome and perfectly ambitious. To shoot the moon, aim for the stars.